This disclosure is related to polymer nanocomposites for early diagnosis of diseases.
Lung cancer is the most frequent cancer worldwide for men, and second only to breast cancer for women and is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Yet, if cancer is detected at its earliest stages it is a treatable, if not curable disease. Likewise, tuberculosis (TB) is one of the world's major public health problems, with 14 million cases worldwide and 1.7 million deaths in 2009 alone, according to WHO estimates. Additionally, it is estimated that around 60% of TB patients seek care at remote health clinics that lack the infrastructure to perform appropriate diagnostic tests. Microscopy, culture, and nucleic acid amplification are the only tests with proven clinical reliability in diagnosing tuberculosis, however none of these methods can be readily implemented at a remote health clinic. In order to achieve effective global diagnosis and treatment it is desirable to develop a tuberculosis test that is as simple to operate as over-the-counter tests, such as those used for pregnancy detection.
It is therefore desirable, in the case of cancer, tuberculosis and other diseases to develop tests that can operate simply without any complications, be eliminated from the body without any complications after their utility is concluded, and that can be distributed over-the-counter with few simple instructions.